Friday, February 11, 2011

Ray Yoshida

Today Friday, and tomorrow Saturday are the last days for the Touch & Go: Ray Yoshida and his Spheres of Influence art show. I wrote about it here when it opened last November. It's seriously one of the most interesting art shows I've seen in the past year. I'd seen some of Ray's work previously but this show blows it all away with rarely seen work that is held by his estate.

There's amazing collage work done with cutout shapes from newspaper comics, paintings from all periods of his life, and lots of work by former colleagues and students produced during a 50-year period. Viewing his work side-by-side with work by Chicago Imagists and other artists, you really see how influential his working style was. Some of the themes and motifs, like working with comics, carried through to the artwork of many of his students.

I also enjoyed the section with photographs depicting some of the collections in his home, which heavily influenced the collecting habits of artists like Roger Brown.